Regards, Ivan
Posted on 04/21/2003 4:47:33 PM PDT by MadIvan
A host of Britons feature in the files of the Iraqi foreign ministry, which faithfully record dealings with Saddam Hussein's regime that many might prefer to forget.
There is no suggestion of wrongdoing, but many of those who contacted the Iraqi regime wrote in somewhat naive terms.
A letter from Sir Edward Heath dated March 6 2000 cheerfully records a luncheon with Mudhafar Amin, head of the Iraqi Interests Section in London, at his home in Salisbury.
"I was delighted that you and your wife were able to come," wrote Sir Edward. "Thank you for leaving me with such an attractive present from Iraq. It will always remind me of you and your wife's visit."
The present in question was a small portrait. Mr Amin duly reported to the foreign ministry in Baghdad on his lunch. But his bland report said little other than that the former prime minister was highly critical of Anglo-American policy towards Iraq - a fact that was well-known.
More baffling is the case of the "Flying Hospital" apparently organised by the Anglican Church as a sanctions-busting initiative to help Iraq's hospitals. The foreign ministry's files contain several letters from Canon Andrew White, director of international ministry at Coventry Cathedral.
"We are involved in a large number of activities to publicise the devastating effects of the sanctions on the people of your nation," he wrote to Mr Amin on Aug 1 2000.
Using language strikingly similar to Iraq's information ministry, Mr White added: "We realise that we are battling against the lies of the Sunday papers who, if you ask me, are just trying to detract from the real truth about the aggression towards Iraq."
Mr White proposed sending a plane filled with doctors and medical equipment to Iraq.
He added: "May I also reiterate that we are quite prepared to break sanctions as we do not recognise the illegal no-fly zone which has been established by the UN."
However, Mr White's idea came to nothing. The Iraqi health ministry wrote to him saying that "technical obstacles" made it impossible. "Please accept our regret to receive the Flying Hospital [sic]," read the letter.
More intriguing was intelligence gleaned from the Iraqi embassy in Moscow about a meeting between Robin Cook, then Foreign Secretary, and Igor Ivanov, the Russian foreign minister, in Feb 2000.
Mohammed Saeed Sahaf, the then Iraqi foreign minister who achieved notoriety and the nickname Comical Ali for his bizarre briefings as information minister during the war, sent a long report on this meeting to Saddam's office on Feb 26 2000.
According to a Russian foreign ministry official, named as Vladimir Titorenko, Mr Cook offered to end Britain's role in enforcing the no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq if Saddam's regime would guarantee that it would not use air power against its own population.
If this was an accurate account of Mr Cook's words - and there is no corroborating evidence - he was considering a move that would have moved Britain dramatically out of step with American policy.
Falling into the slightly farcical category is a series of communications with Lord Waverley, a member of the House of Lords. "I shall drive from Amman to Baghdad on March 12 2000 and would expect to stay for a period of up to one week," said Lord Waverley in a letter to Mr Amin.
Mr Sahaf, the foreign minister, sent a memorandum to Saddam's office explaining that the peer was a "respectable man" and that his visit would have a great impact on public opinion in Britain.
Most predictable is a stream of approving correspondence about John Pilger's ITV documentary on the effects of sanctions in Iraq in 2000. The foreign ministry and information ministry bombarded Mr Amin with requests for videotapes of the programme.
Regards, Ivan
I never did like Kook. Soon he'll be a tired, old sot.
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May this be another nail in this obnoxious, so-called journo's coffin.
Regards, Ivan
[Auberon Waugh] invented the wonderful verb “to pilger”, from which can be formed the noun “pilgerism”, which so neatly sums up the nature of much of the earnest, well-meaning and smugly self-basting writing beloved of lefty journalists all over the world. The great charm of pilgerism is that it saves a hell of a lot of research, as well as any thought. The real mystery of this kind of thing is how there seems to be a kind of telepathic transmission of orthodoxy, such that all pilgerising journalists appear to think much the same thing and to wheel and stampede like a mob of sheep without apparent prompting but all in the same direction. The precise definition of pilgerism does not matter, and anyhow, given the litigious nature of Mr Pilger, is impossible. The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary does not even try, contenting itself with the obscure metallurgical use of the word.
The origin of Waugh’s coinage of “to pilger” dates back to a piece Pilger wrote in which, in his habitual lugubrious and accusatory style, he recounted the theft from her parents and selling into prostitution of a young Thai girl in Bangkok. Waugh, who used to delight in shocking his primmer readers with his boasts of his prowess with Thai prostitutes (he was in fact notoriously faithful to his wife of many years) smelt a rat, and, with the help of friends from the Far Eastern Economic Review and others, dug around and soon discovered that poor Pilger had been deceived by a Thai con man, and that the transaction had never taken place. Pilger could only counter, lamely, that there are lots of young prostitutes in Bangkok. But everybody knew that already. It hardly needed a field trip and large sums belonging to his employer paid to a con man to discover it.-- Padraic P. McGuinness, in the Sydney Morning Herald.
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